Relief
by Sepia Painter
Summary: Well, you see..." Things never ended well when Shuichi said those three little words. Written in first person, Eiri's POV.
1. Nightmares and Phonecalls

**Relief  
**Nightmares and Phonecalls

**

* * *

**

_It_ is starting to drive me nuts.

Yes. _It_. Not even him anymore. _It_.

_It_ is not Shuichi. _It_ hasn't spoken in a voice louder than a car horn in nearly two weeks. _It_ hasn't put on a single piece of trashy clothing so horrible that a stripper would be embarrassed to wear it. _It_ hasn't been singing in the shower, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the car, at the store. _It_ isn't Shuichi anymore, because _It_ hasn't done a single solitary Shuichi-esque thing since _It_ got home from seeing a movie with that stupid punk Nakano. Except maybe forget to turn the light off every time he goes to bed.

I'm about to call that new-age rocker freak and ask him what the hell he did with Shuichi's fucking soul, because this behavior is driving me insane, and to tell the truth is starting to get creepy. I sent my brat off with that long-haired weirdo just fine, and he comes back damaged goods.

I want a refund.

Every time I ask him what's wrong he just smiles and says "Nothing's wrong. Why would anything be wrong? I'm fine." Everything's fine. The world is fine. The entire fucking _universe_ is fine.

I hate the word "fine".

* * *

It's two a.m. and the lights in the bedroom are still on.

Shindo Shuichi, lying on his back curled in a ball, bathed in a pool of light from the lamp on his bedside table, is whimpering. My silhouette falls over the room as I stand in the doorway, I can feel a wrinkle forming in the middle of my forehead as I watch him wrestle with night terrors.

A louder whimper, a broken, pleading sound.

Before I can even think about what I'm doing, I've taken two small steps towards him and pause when Shuichi whimpers again. In a few strides I'm at his side, curious—alright, _concerned_—about what is making him act so strange, watching the smooth planes of his small round face fold with imagined distress. Something's wrong.

"Shuichi?" Heavier breathing, a gasp of fright. "Shuichi?!" Shaking him now, trying to wake him up from whatever nightmare has been plaguing him.

"No!" Shuichi screams as he jerks forward, suddenly awake.

It makes me jumped with the suddenness of his movement

"Yuki! Oh God…Yuki! I...I....I..." Shuichi's stuttered attempts at speech fall flat as he dissolves into tears. I can't do anything but hold his face in my hands and search his eyes for answers.

"What's—" I have to clear my throat of emotion before I can speak. "What's wrong?"

He's breathing too heavily to speak to me, crying too hard to see that I'm here. He can't stop saying my name, it's as thought I'm a million miles away when he needs me right there.

I can't think what to do. In some ways I want to hold him, to tell him it's okay and that I'm there with him, I want to cuddle him close until he's calm and find out what's wrong. In some ways I want to revert to what I know and do best: being an asshole. Letting him cry himself out and coming back when the emotions are under control and I can handle him better.

I stay frozen, waiting. For what I don't know.

"Yuki…" He sighs, his voice rising up high in distress. I grip his face tighter and force his gaze into mine.

"What's wrong?" I demanded, harsh, but calm.

"I'm…I'm sorry." He gasps, eyes spilling over with tears.

I can't speak for a second. "_What_?"

"S-s-sorry…" he stutters again. "Sorry for…this."

"What? What in the hell are you talking about, Shuichi?"

A gasp. He opens his eyes and locks them on me. "Sorry for…this…this...behavior." His body is racked with sobs and he shudders and curls into himself and cries harder. Sometimes I marvel at his ability to continue crying when anyone else would have been spent long ago.

"Behavior? Shu, you're not acting any less weird than you usually do." Oh. That was not really the right thing to say.

"Always…cry—crying. I'm s-sorry!"

"No!" I say gruffly, trying to bring him back to a calming point. "No, it's okay. You had a nightmare, shit happens. Talk to me about it."

He launched into a tear filled, gasp filled, sigh filled, emotion filled sermon about his nightmare. Half of it flew over my head in the garbled mess of words and crying, and the other half caught in my ears in clumps that I had to decipher. By the end of it I had caught the general gist of his nightmare. Something to do with me being in the army and going on a mission to the desert, being attacked by mutant monster things, being raped, and then being killed and/or eaten by those same mutant monster things.

As soon as he finished and the tears had stopped I brushed the bubble-gum pink hair from his eyes and planted a kiss on his soggy cheek. "I'm right here. Nothing's coming after me. Nothing's going to happen to me…or you, for that matter."

But as I was consoling the tiny boy before me, my mind was moving a thousand miles a second. Where on earth had this kid gotten those ideas in his head? Was this the reason for the lights being left on the last two weeks when he went to bed? For his quieted voice and toned down moods? For the sweatshirts and jeans and the lack of tanks and short-shorts, and the haunted, sleepless looking eyes?

I asked him as much.

He gave me a watery smile. "Maybe a little."

I shook my head in disbelief. "Where on earth did these nightmares come from?"

"Well, you see…"

Things never ended well when he said those three little words.

* * *

After tucking Shuichi back into bed and assuring him I'd come to bed myself in a moment, I wandered out into the living room and stared at the phone, then the clock, then the phone again. An angry, frightening grin lit my face as I picked up the receiver from its cradle and dialed the number.

It was three in the morning. Perfect. I wanted to wake that bastard up and rip him a new ass-hole. I was seething with anger.

_Ring._

_Ring._

_Ring._

"…'Ello?" came the groggy, distant reply.

"Nakano Hiroshi!" I said in a loud, yet subdued voice, trying for a fake happiness in my tone to irritate him. "How are you doing?"

"…Mr.…Yuki…?" A hissing sigh and groan. "What's…what's up? What's wr—" a yawn. "Wrong?"

"Oh nothing's wrong. Nothing at all." I couldn't keep up the fake happiness any longer. My anger was at full-boil. "I was just wondering what the _fuck_ possessed you to take Shuichi to a _fucking _horror movie?!"

* * *

**A/N:** So this first chapter starts us off at a more serious level, but the humor is going to come out in the next few chapters. This should be a rather short piece, but I hope you enjoy. Review?

Oh, extra cookies to the first reviewer that can guess what horror movie Shuichi went to see with Hiro.


	2. Calming Shuichi

**Relief**

**Calming Shuichi**

* * *

The next morning did not begin well.

I woke up much too early. It had been almost three thirty in the morning before I was done bitching out Nakano, almost four before I had calmed down enough to return to bed and sleep with my pink-haired lover curled into my side.

Five hours later, and I was awake.

Like I said. Too early.

Believe me, it wasn't my idea to be awake at such an ungodly hour. But Shuichi was clinging to my side, his tight grasp putting dents in my skin. I tried to rub his back, his hair, his arms, his face, anything that would relax him in his sleeping state and making him loosen the vice grip he had locked me in, all to no avail.

It was starting to hurt, actually. I poked him between the shoulder blades. No response. I prodded his stomach and again, no response. "Shuichi," I whispered breathily in his ear. "Shuichi, you need to wake up. Let me go, Shuichi."

That at least earned me a groan.

"Shuichi," I said again.

Mutterings and murmurings thrummed against my shoulder. Houston, we have progress.

"Shuichi," I said once more, getting slightly irritated. "You're going to crack one of my ribs, and then I'm going to be pissed you little monkey."

"Sorry!" He suddenly gasped, coming into reality with a jolt and releasing my side.

I coughed once and felt the area of skin he'd been holding. I could actually feel the imprint of his hand in my side. That was going to leave a mark. Damn my light skin, I bruised like a fucking banana.

"Sorry, Yuki," he said again, watching me with frightened eyes. He'd curled himself up at the other end of the bed.

"It's fine."

I brushed it off and sunk back down into my pillow, determined to sleep for at least another four…five…ten hours. But something was missing. Shuichi didn't budge an inch from his curled up position. I opened one eye and stared at him with it.

"You coming back to bed, or what?"

He didn't answer for a minute. When he did, his voice was so quiet I had to strain to hear him. "Are you angry with me?"

"For nearly breaking me in two? Hell no. Now get back in bed and go to sleep." He had to be just as tired as I was. After all, he was the one who'd been walking around like the living dead because of sleep deprivation.

"Not for that…" he said quietly.

"For what, then?"

"The movie."

I was confused. "What about the movie? Why would I be mad at you because of a movie?"

He suddenly burst forth with his trademark Shuichi-Shout, scrambling forward on the bed a few inches. "For going to see it! For getting so worked up! You know that I know that I'm a big baby when it comes to scary stuff, and I went to see it anyway! Aren't you mad at me?"

I couldn't help but stare at him for a minute. "You idiot," I replied quietly, and then shifted position, half-sitting and holding my arms out to him. "Come here."

He crawled forward on his hands and knees and fell into my embrace. I held him for a moment, understanding that for now he needed the sweet me, the kind me that could handle his antics and be tolerant. "I'm not mad at you Shuichi, not even a little. I suppose you could have made a better decision about your movie genre choices, but I'm more upset with your friend Nakano for not taking better care of you."

He laughed a little, but I silenced him and continued talking. "I'm serious. You're punk friend took you out of my care and brought you back in less than perfect condition. I could beat him to a pulp."

"Hiro didn't mean to," Shuichi whispered into my chest.

"Mean to or not, I might just have to punch the bastard the next time I see him."

Shuichi shook his head, but remained quiet, his fingers tracing patterns on my chest. I yawned and changed positions, laying him next to me as I settled back into the mattress. "I'm going to sleep now." I told him. "Stay up if you want, but try not to burn anything down while I'm unconscious."

He giggled. "I'll do my best," then he sighed and nuzzled into me, falling asleep almost as instantly as I did.

* * *

When I woke up next it was nearly four in the afternoon. My back protested the prolonged stillness as I stretched and yawned. Shuichi wasn't in bed beside me, but the shower was running in the next room.

The bathroom was steaming and he was singing quietly to himself when I entered.

"Hey, brat," I said. There was a squeak and a clatter from inside the stall. "Any survivors in there?" I asked sarcastically as his sudsy head popped out of the shower.

"Sorry, Yuki. You scared me."

I shook my head. "How long have you been up?"

"I don't know…twenty minutes."

My response was a noncommittal grunt as I turned to the mirror and swiped off some steam with my hand. I grabbed my toothbrush, put a glob of mint paste directly on my tongue, and scrubbed furiously. My mouth felt and tasted like it had been filled with glue.

He'd been quiet all that time, but as I swished and spit for the last time a pair of long, wet arms snaked around my waist and pushed me against his slick torso. I looked over my shoulder at his impish smirk.

"You little brat." I growled. "You just got my pajama bottoms all wet."

His smiled grew even wider. "I can make more than that wet, Yuki."

I shivered and closed my eyes. He let go and snuck back into the shower. Once I'd composed myself sufficiently, I followed.

* * *

"So what are we going to do about the nightmares?" I asked as I stirred a pot of stew that was boiling on the stove.

"Hmm?" Shuichi responded.

"You're nightmares; they're not just going to disappear by themselves. What are we going to do about them?"

"I don't know," he said quietly, sighing. "I don't know how to get rid of them."

I nodded and turned the heat down before adding a little salt to the stew and tasting my concoction. It would do. I snapped the stove off completely and dished out two bowls, bringing them to the table. Shuichi started to gobble at his before I could warn him that it was hot. He didn't seem to mind, he was to busy sucking the food down like a vacuum cleaner.

"What's causing them?" I asked before blowing on a spoonful of stew and eating it.

"That movie," he said, looking at me as though I was demented.

"I know _that_, idiot." I said shortly. "I mean what's the basis, what about it exactly scared you?"

He chewed that over (literally) and then shrugged. "Nothing about it was particularly frightening, if you really think about it. I suppose I was just applying it to a 'what if' situation and let my imagination run away with me."

I raised an eyebrow. "What kinds of what-if situations?"

"Just, like…" he swallowed a bit of stew. "What if this happened to me, or to Hiro, or to you…stuff like that."

I stared at him disbelievingly for a moment.

"What?" He asked.

"You're nightmare yesterday; you said I was in it."

"Yeah, you were like the main person who was in the movie, all the stuff in the movie happened to you and…" he paused, and then his eyes grew wide with comprehension. "Oh."

"Yeah. _Oh_." I said, a little more snappishly that I'd meant to. "Are you done?" I pointed to his empty bowl and he nodded. I grabbed it, placed the dishes in the sink, and then walked to the entryway to grab my coat and my keys.

"Where are you going Yuki?" He asked, standing.

"The rental store. Get your coat, you're coming too."

He smiled a little, his eyes glowing with joy at the prospect of going somewhere with me. I rolled my eyes. The stupidest things could make him happy.

"What are we doing?"

"We're going to rent that movie, and you and I are going to watch the whole goddamn thing together. And then, we're going to watch the special features so you can see just how they made it look the way it looks…so that you know it's just costumes, makeup, and computers. Got it?"

We'd reached the car by now. I was backing down the drive when I caught sight of his face. His gorgeous purple eyes had grown as large as dinner plates. He was frightened. "I don't want to watch it again!"

"You said yourself it wasn't that scary in its own right, it was just your damn overactive imagination."

"What if watching it just makes it worse?"

I ignored his question and asked one of my own. "Do you remember the name of that movie?"

"Yeah."

"What was it?"

"The Hills Have Eyes…Two."

* * *

**A/N:** First reviewer got the answer right! *throws mountains of cookies at DStar5* It was Hills Have Eyes 2!!!!!!

I'm deeply, deeply sorry for the wait when it came to an update for this story. Life got in the way. I promise the next update won't be two months away!

Anyway, this story isn't exactly cooperating. I had planned to make it more humorous than it is, but my plot bunnies tend to have minds of their own. This particular situation actually happened to me…I went to see this movie at the theatre down the street that plays hit movies for four dollars about a month after they've come out on DVD. It scared the shit out of me…not because it was just that scary (I mean it was, but it was more twisted than frightening) but because I kept putting myself or my loved ones in the position of the main characters. My partner finally had to go rent the damn thing and show me the special features (like Yuki! Hahahaha!) just to prove that it was all fake.

So, the next (and most likely final) chapter should be here soon. Please review!


	3. The Rental Store

**Relief**

**The Rental Store**

* * *

I'd remembered my shades but forgotten my hat to cover my blonde hair. I regretted that almost as soon as I dragged Shuichi through the doors of the nearest video rental store. Teenage girls lurking in the chick-flicks section immediately started giggling and staring, chattering to each other in what they thought were hushed tones. If they didn't recognize me yet, it was going to happen soon.

Thank God Shuichi had remembered his hat, or we would have been busted.

"Let's hurry," I hissed, pushing him into the horror flicks section.

His eyes caught sight of the girls in the corner and he nodded quickly, shuffling forward and scanning the shelves. He took one side, I took the other.

"Look! They have—"

"Not now! We have a mission here. Focus!" I snapped, my eyes flickering to the girls. If he kept going on they'd figure it out soon. I'd almost blown it as it was, coming very close to saying his name at the end of the sentence.

"Right! Sorry." He kept scanning for a moment and then let out a triumphant, and slightly frightened, squeak.

"Got it!"

He held up a DVD with a horrific piece of cover art. Dim lighting, a place in the desert, a dark figure dragging a body behind it with bloody red letters spelling out the title _The Hills Have Eyes 2_.

I scoffed. "You actually _watched_ this?"

He managed to look abashed. "Yeah…I guess I didn't think it would be that bad, at the time. But I don't know if we should do this. I don't want to watch it again! What if it's worse the second time?" His voice was rising in octaves; I grabbed his arm to hush him.

"I'll be there. If it gets bad, we'll turn it off. Just trust me. This will work."

He was looking up at me through his sunglasses. His eyes were so luminous I could see them through the tinted shades, and his smile was glowing. He was getting teary. I smirked at him. "You're such a baby."

He hit me. "You always have to ruin it!"

I sauntered forward to the counter and Shuichi followed behind, hands shoved into his pockets as he tried not to smile while he pouted. I placed the movie on the counter, then as an afterthought put a box of popcorn and a box of candy with it. Shuichi couldn't pretend any longer, he had to smile.

He grabbed my arm and looked up at me with his goofiest grin. I shook my head at his antics.

Just as the teenaged, pimple-faced clerk was placing our items in a plastic bag, Shuichi made one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

"Thanks, Yuki…"

The fan-girls in the corner had super-sonic hearing. I could have sworn it. They picked up on that small sentence in an instant, and I knew that they knew that all of their conspiracies had turned out to be true. What other tall, handsome, blonde haired Japanese man would wear sunglasses inside _and_ be named Yuki?

I hate my life.

I snatched the bag from the clerk, threw a twenty at him, and grabbed Shuichi's arm before tearing out of the store.

Too late. Screams of "Eiri Yuki!" and "Shuichi Shindo!" followed us out of the store. I unlocked the car and threw myself in the front seat, tossed the bag with the movie and snacks into the back seat, and slammed the power-locks as Shuichi closed the door. He fumbled with his seatbelt.

"I'm sorry Yuki! I'm sorry!" He was saying hysterically.

I turned the car on and threw it into reverse, tore out of the parking space and zoomed forward all in the space of a few seconds. There wasn't a mob…at least not yet, but I gave it about two point five seconds before there would be one. I gunned the engine, ran a red light, and didn't slow down for twenty blocks straight.

"Yuki, I'm sorry! I'm really, really sorry!"

"I know," I snapped. "Don't worry about it. Shit happens."

He was quiet for a few minutes, letting me be angry in peace. Smart boy. But as we neared our house, maybe another five minutes of driving remaining, he looked at me and coughed quietly before saying, "Yuki, I think you should slow down."

I was pushing sixty in a thirty-five mile zone. I honestly didn't give a shit. I wasn't going to let those freaky fangirl's maul me, my lover, and my precious car. Never mind the fact that they couldn't have possibly caught up to us by now…though you never knew. When faced with a celebrity they seemed to multiply like rabbits and had powers like Superman. I bumped it up to sixty-five.

* * *

My forehead smacked the steering wheel for the fifth, sixth, seventh time.

"I told you to slow down, Yuki," Shuichi said quietly next to me, trying to push me away from the steering wheel so I'd stop trying to kill myself…slowly…by painful brain pummeling.

"Shut up." I said waspishly. The combination of red and blue flashing lights and the dull throb from whacking my head repeatedly was starting to give me a headache.

"Here you are, sir," the police officer said as he handed me a piece of pink paper and started to walk back to his car.

I smiled as sweetly as I possibly could. It probably looked like I was constipated. "Thanks." I replied coldly.

As the cop drove away I looked at the ticket. One hundred and ninety two dollars.

My forehead smacked the steering wheel for the eighth, ninth, tenth time.

* * *

The popcorn was popping wildly in the microwave; Shuichi had dumped the box of candy into a bowl for us to share from. I poured myself a glass of hard-earned wine, downed half of it, and refilled. He filled a glass with soda all the way to the brim and sipped at it slowly while watching the popcorn revolve on the turntable of the microwave. When it beeped he pulled it out and dumped it in another bowl.

I wandered out to the living room, set my glass down, and pulled the DVD out of the bag. The disturbing cover art was enough to make my skin crawl. Better keep the lights on during this one.

I slipped the disc into the DVD player and pushed play. The previews began and we settled down together to watch.

Once it began, Shuichi clung to my arm. It would probably be numb, or removed completely by the end of the movie. He buried himself into my shoulder, but I jostled him. "I didn't rent it just so you could hide."

He squeaked and nodded.

Within the first few minutes I understood exactly why Shuichi had freaked out so badly. I watched in morbid fascination as a woman gave birth, screaming in pain, with some sick pervert watching. When the baby came out the pervert grabbed it. Still born. Then he killed the girl.

I wanted to gag. "You watched this. Nakano watched this. And neither of you didn't fucking leave the theatre?"

"Hiro seemed to be enjoying himself, and he'd paid for my ticket…I didn't want to ruin it."

"You're a fucking multi-millionaire; you could have paid him back the ten bucks for a ticket, and then some!" Some of my intense anger from the night before was returning. I suddenly wanted to call the long-haired guitarist again and scream at him some more.

"I know," Shuichi said in a small voice, wincing as we watched an army officer pull something out of the skull of a dead man.

"Nakano liked this shit?'

"He likes horror movies," Shuichi responded simply.

I snorted.

We suffered through almost two more hours of gratuitous violence and gore, a disgusting and violent rape of one of the female army officers by one of the fucked up mutant things that were living in the desert, a lot of shooting, some failed escape attempts, and by the end of it only a few of the people survived. We'd paused it four times throughout, each time when Shuichi had gripped my arm tight enough that the blood stopped flowing and buried his face completely in my body. I felt nauseous as the end credits played. It took me a moment to find my voice.

"How are you doing, Shu?" I asked quietly.

He sniffed. "I'm okay. Better than I was the first time."

I hit the Menu button on the DVD remote and scrolled down to the Special Features menu. "Alright. Here's where the therapy begins." I hit the first thing I saw. A commentary on how the movie was made. We watched the make-up artists work their gruesome magic, saw how the camera crew shot certain special effects, listened to the actors describe what it was like to play this role. Some of the actors who played the mutant dudes talked about how difficult it was to act out these disturbing scenes.

Shuichi seemed to brighten after that.

I returned to the menu, and went down to the third one on the menu, skipping the deleted scenes entirely. I didn't want to know what other sick shit _had_ been cut out of this movie. This one was the bloopers. This had to be good.

We watched and laughed as people half-in and half-out of costume got their makeup put on and made faces at the camera, saw people crack up laughing during the scene where one of the soldiers came running out of the porta-potty…and accidentally dropped trou. Saw people screw up their lines. Saw one of the actors in mutant makeup try to come up behind another actor to scare them, and was screamed at and socked in the balls for his trouble. Saw people trip and fall. Saw someone dancing with no rhythm.

When it was over Shuichi was giggling and had released my arm, only holding my hand now, our fingers intertwined. I looked at him and gave him a little smile. He grinned up at me.

"Thank you, Yuki. I think that may have helped."

I kissed his forehead. "No problem, brat."

He laughed at me and turned his face upwards, catching the lips that had been pressed to his forehead with his own. I fumbled for the TV remote, shut it off, and picked him up bridal-style in my arms. "Let's go get some sleep," I said huskily.

"Sleep?" He said and laughed again. "And here I thought I was going to get laid."

I couldn't help myself. That one made me laugh. Just a little.

* * *

Late into the night, one Shuichi Shindo rose as quietly as he could from the bed and tip-toed into the living room. As he curled himself into a corner of the couch, he picked up the phone and dialed Hiro's number.

On the fourth ring he picked up. "Hello?" He said sleepily.

"Pay up, Hiro," Shuichi said gleefully. "He helped get rid of the nightmares, just like I said he would."

"No way," Hiro said in disbelief. "So Japan's number one Ice-King actually gave a shit?"

"I _told_ you he cares about me."

"Right. I'd believe that if he wasn't such an asshole. What'd he do?"

"He watched the whole movie with me, and then showed me the extra stuff about makeup and the outtakes. He even risked fangirls and got a speeding ticket, all for the sake of helping me!" Shuichi could hardly contain his glee.

"Alright, twenty bucks. Tomorrow."

Shuichi laughed. "Good night Hiro."

"'Night Shuichi."

As the J-pop singer crept back into the bedroom, yawning and covering himself with the sheets, Yuki turned over in his bed and kissed him. Shuichi froze.

"Pay up, huh?"

Shuichi gulped and laughed nervously. "You heard that?"

"You weren't exactly being quiet."

"Well, I—"

Yuki pressed a kiss to his lips and chuckled. "Do you do this often?"

"No! No, no, no! It was just this once. Hiro and I were talking about my nightmares…he just made this comment and I got all defensive of you 'cause he said you wouldn't care even if I told you, that you'd just get mad 'cause I saw the movie. And…well… you did get mad…but you also helped!"

Yuki rolled his eyes and kissed his lover again to quiet him. "Never again, Shindo."

Shuichi nodded enthusiastically, his breathing became slightly more labored with the force of Yuki's kisses. "Never again. Right. Promise."

Yuki laughed. "Good boy."

**End -3 **

* * *

**Author's Note**: Hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know what you think, final thoughts, likes and dislikes.

Until next time, Ja ne!


End file.
